Accounting for losses in the optimization of production of hydroplants

This paper presents a dynamic programming approach for the solution of the unit loading problem in hydroplant management. The model accounts for losses in the hydraulic network and head variations which are functions of the decision variables´ values. A judicious change of variable allows the problem to be decomposed hierarchically so that it can be solved by a succession of dynamic programs. This approach solves the unit loading problem corrected for losses without additional computational effort.